from the okay-then dept

Ubisoft and DRM go back a long, long way. In nearly every case, it hasn't exactly gone well for the game company, either. Its uPlay launcher, for instance, sort of stripped all the DRM out of publisher's games, which didn't make them too happy. Then there was the time its DRM allowed for the remote hacking of its customer's computers. Yay. Yet, even these experiences never really deterred Ubisoft from trying to beat the pirates at their own game with different, but always annoying DRM strategies. My favorite, frankly, is still the vuvuzela DRM.

I have no idea how far this latest strategy of Ubisoft's will go or what it plans to do with their honeypot trap, but the company sure has done a nice job getting Far Cry 4 pirates to out themselves.

If your copy of Far Cry 4 on PC doesn't have FOV (Field Of View) options, and you complained about this on a forum, you might want to go and delete your comments. Because there's a very good chance you've just outed yourself as someone who pirated the game. Seems the option to adjust the FOV was added as part of an update that came along with the retail release of the game, so anyone who doesn't have it is most likely (a small handful of folks might have bought a disc version and never gone online, but then, how would you be complaining online?) in possession of a pirated copy.

Which, I mean, meh. In and of itself, getting those who pirated the game to unwittingly out themselves is kind of funny, kind of clever, and certainly isn't of any harm. If used in conjunction with a human approach and a little social shaming, it could actually be quite productive. Ubisoft's reputation would have to be overcome, but, hey, this is the land of second chances or whatever. If this is part of some plan for Ubisoft to bring out a legal hammer however, well, that ain't going to work as a matter of a long term business plan.

Which is what makes this seem simultaneously exhausting and futile. This arms race with pirates at best will never end and more likely will always be lost eventually, so what's the point?

from the women-are-expensive dept

So, let's get this out of the way: I don't for a moment believe that Ubisoft, as a company, is sexist, prejudiced, or hates women. I really don't. It may well be a tone-deaf, unwieldly company without much concern for a huge percentage of its customer base, but I don't think the fact that it is suddenly excluding female characters from its games was something the company did out of any ill-feelings towards women. After all, Ubisoft has included female characters in many previous games, even games in the very franchises in question, which makes it all the more baffling why it would open itself up to all the backlash by opting out of the fairer sex this go around.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, there were two separate stories in the past week or so about flagship Ubisoft games nixing the planned inclusion of playable female characters in gameplay. The first concerns Assassin Creed: Unity, the next iteration in the franchise, which had planned to include the same female assassins for multiplayer from previous iterations, but then cut them out completely. Strangely, and likely adding to the fervor of the backlash, a second story came out revealing that plans to include female playable characters in multiplayer for Far Cry 4 have also been dropped, and for similar reasons. Regarding the Assassin's Creed story:

Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Unity creative director Alex Amancio said that while they originally planned to include female assassins, the "reality of production" made adding the additional characters too costly. The studio "had to" cut female assassins from the co-op mode, Amancio explained in response to a question from Polygon's Ben Kuchera, because keeping them in would have doubled the cost of pretty much everything: "it's double the animations, double the voices, all that stuff, double the visual assets—especially because we have customizable assassins."

And Far Cry 4:

Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Alex Hutchinson, the game's director, said that the developers were "inches away" from allowing players to choose between a man or woman as a co-op buddy in the upcoming shooter's multiplayer. What stopped them? Hutchinson said it was "purely a workload issue." The team didn't have a "female reader for the character" at its disposal, nor did it have "all the animations in place."

The reaction from gamers in general has been decidedly negative. What's worse, there is obviously no positive support for this either. If you're reacting to this news at all, you're almost certainly either very angry or you don't care one way or the other. Now, let's reiterate this to be very clear again: I'm not accusing Ubisoft of hating women, or of refusing to include female characters on any kind of ideological grounds. But that doesn't make the decision and the reasons provided any less stupid. Even other members of the game-developing industry are calling bullshit.

In my educated opinion, I would estimate this to be a day or two's work. Not a replacement of 8000 animations. - Jonathan Cooper, Naughty Dog and former Ubisoft animator

"We don't really care to put the effort in to make a woman assassin" #realrealityofgamedevelopment - Manveer Heir, Bioware

Is this some kind of major industry crisis? No, probably not, but as gaming develops as a major entertainment medium for a diversifying demographic base, companies that refuse to listen to the backlash on this kind of thing are going to find themselves in trouble. Something like this in particular really should have been thought through more carefully, even though it's not clear much thought was put into this at all. This isn't the 90's any longer and the average gamer looks far different than the stereotype. We're talking about a 31 year old, likely educated to some degree, person who is every bit as likely to be female as male. Seriously, 48% of gamers are women. The boys club's door has been beaten down by women and game developers had better start recognizing that or risk the consequences, because this was just refusing to put in the time to include some female multiplayer characters and the backlash got this big. Imagine what an even deeper slight to the woman gamer will cause.

from the because-comcast-thinks-you're-an-idiot dept

Comcast continues its efforts to present itself as one of the most out of touch and ridiculous companies out there, with a new commercial directed at videogamers, highlighting how fast Comcast's in-game WiFi is.

Note how it's addressed to "real gamers." Just one problem, as "Mr. Comcast" goes on about how there's "no buffering" and how much better the video gaming experience is with Comcast's Xfinity WiFi, people pointed out that the game in question has no online play. The game is Ubisoft's Trials Fusion, which means that there's no reason there would be any buffering at all in the first place.

Mr. Comcast gets the gamers playing Trials Fusion. The game is indeed a shiny new title, released on PC and for the major gaming consoles (Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4) just a few weeks ago. The motorcycle tricks-and-racing game launched to generally positive reviews that lauded its mechanics and features. But reviewers also mentioned one notable feature that the game does not have: an online multiplayer mode.

No online mode, no net connection. No network connection, no network lag.

“Do you notice any buffering?” Mr. Comcast then asks.

The gamers happily reply that they do not! And of course they don’t: the game ships on a disc or as a one-time digital download. It’s not on a streaming or cloud service like a Netflix or YouTube video; there’s nothing to buffer. That would be akin to asking if you see Microsoft Word buffering when you type a report on your work computer. Your software might be running slowly, but “buffering” is definitely not the issue.

from the wait,-we're-still-doing-this? dept

With the release of the latest South Park video game, titled The Stick Of Truth, we recently remarked on how silly the attempted censorship of the game will be for releases outside of North America. The reason, of course, is that the full version of the game is and will be available for download outside of the approved channels. While most of the censorship stories revolve around some of the more sophomoric jokes in the game, which I of course love, leave it to Germany to teach us how fickle the sensibilities of some governments are.

Apparently the game was supposed to be released in the land whose motto is "Unity and Justice and Freedom" this week, but that's been delayed because the game's publisher, Ubisoft, accidentally produced copies of the game for Germany that still include images of the Nazi swastika. Such images, as you might be aware, are verboten.

Users are posting on Steam's forums that the German (and Austrian) versions of the game have been hit with an 11th-hour delay. The reason? That those versions contain "an unconstitutional symbol", and mean the game's release in those two markets is TBA.

Let me say this first: I get you, Germany. The embarrassment over the systematic murder of an enormous Jewish, homosexual, and gypsy population isn't the kind of sting that goes away easily. But here's a piece of advice: limiting symbols and speech in this manner isn't productive and certainly isn't in the spirit of the 86a section of the Strafgesetzbuch. Attempting to limit humor regards to your own past won't get you anywhere. Open dialogue is what admonishes fascism.

Take Americans, for example. We straight up murdered tens of thousands of Native Americans and then had the balls to refer to our policy as our "Manifest Destiny." Now we have football teams filled with the decendents of African slaves playing under the moniker of our Native American victims so we can sell beer to everyone else. And, sure, when you really think about it that way, it isn't funny.

But South Park is funny, and anyone that really wants to see a swastika enough to put forth a little effort in Germany can do so via a myriad of avenues, including downloading illegal copies of The Stick Of Truth. A constitutional requirement to omit parts of your history won't do you any good and may no longer be useful to your society.

from the whateva,-I-do-what-I-want dept

South Park: The Stick of Truth, the much anticipated RPG personally devised by Trey Parker & Matt Stone to be virtually indistinguishable from an episode of the iconic TV show, has been very close to becoming vaporware over the years, especially when original publisher THQ shut down. But it was rescued by Ubisoft, and now has a firm worldwide release date of next week.

It will surprise no one who knows the show that the scenes are very crass and, if you're a fan, probably executed in a hilarious manner:

This is of course not South Park's most famous censorship dust-up, given their epic battle with Comedy Central over depictions of Muhammad, but it may be the most utterly pointless, because it should be obvious what's going to happen: fans in those parts of the world are going to either pirate North American versions of the game or find videos of all the deleted parts online, or both. This decision is basically giving everyone in Europe, the Middle East and Africa a big reason to pirate by saying "sorry, we refuse to sell you the complete version of our game."

It's the sort of game where people are going to care, too. The game has a long and elaborate script, all read by Trey & Matt in full voice-performance mode, and as silly as the listed scenes might sound to someone who isn't familiar with South Park, they are likely to be integral parts of a well-crafted whole. And while it's getting attention from the gaming community at large, the majority of people buying it are doing so out of their love for the show, and are going to want the whole thing.

There's going to be an ironic reverse effect too: Trey & Matt are famous for making good use of censored elements in their shows, whether by covering them up with hilarious non-sequiter images or replacing them with text that seriously addresses the situation from the point of view of the creators. So customers who get the uncut version are likely to go seek out videos of the censored version, just to find out how the game handled it.

Of course, it's not easy to place blame in this situation — Ubisoft's decision is futile but may also have been necessary as part of dealing with various regulatory and ratings agencies overseas. It's just so amusing, but sad, to see people attempting to divide content between different parts of the world when we're already deep inside an era defined by global connectivity. On the plus side, we may get another hilarious South Park episode about piracy out of it.

from the oopsie dept

Ubisoft's history of DRM use has been...interesting. One could nearly write an entire book on how to fail at DRM using nothing but examples from the company. DRM that allows hackers to take control of gamers' machines. DRM punishing only paying customers when Ubisoft decides to move their servers. DRM that is, seriously, comprised of f$#%ing vuvuzelas. What you'll notice as a trend in these examples, however, is that at least Ubisoft was content to punish only their own customers or themselves, depending on the situation.

Not so, any longer. Their uPlay client for PCs was built so poorly that a simple tool developed by hackers can fool the client into thinking users already own copies of games, allowing for completely DRM-free versions of games from other publishers to be downloaded for free from their platform. As an apparent sign of solidarity by Ubisoft, they also managed to offer up their own unreleased game via the exploit as well.

The vulnerability is allegedly present in the uPlay launcher, which when exploited gives DRM free access to gaming titles from almost all game publishers including the likes of EA Games and Square Nix. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which hasn’t been released yet, is lying on Ubisoft servers which hackers have downloaded. As a proof of the exploit, hackers even posted an 1 hour 30 mins long footage of the game.

Typically, when one does something over a long period of time, one gets better at it. Ubisoft appears to be an anomaly in this respect, going so far backwards on the practice of DRM that even their own client software can strip it out with but a little assistance from hackers. Nevermind how stupid and useless DRM is to begin with; now publishers can't even trust the software that is supposed to deliver it. With enemies of DRM hidden everywhere, even in inanimate software, perhaps it's time to give it up entirely.

There's plenty of assassinating and plundering on the way, it would appear, but none of that bothers PETA. Nope, it's the fake killing of fake whales that has the group back in full statement-issuing pique. Here's what it had to say about the deadly digital whaling:

Whaling—that is, shooting whales with harpoons and leaving them to struggle for an hour or more before they die or are hacked apart while they are still alive—may seem like something out of the history books, but this bloody industry still goes on today in the face of international condemnation, and it's disgraceful for any game to glorify it. PETA encourages video game companies to create games that celebrate animals—not games that promote hurting and killing them.

I don't know which intern gets handed instructions to "write something angry" about video game animal abuse, but I can only imagine they're fairly resentful of the interns that get handed plum assignments to write about actual, real-world, horrific animal abuse. Statements like these, directed at fiction, make me believe there's some sort of "DAYS SINCE LAST OUTRAGE" board posted at the PETA office, and heads (HUMAN ONLY) start rolling if it passes single digits.

Ubisoft obviously felt this statement deserved a response, and handled it with all the dignity it could muster while still leaving room for plenty of withering, bone-dry sarcasm.

"History is our playground in Assassin's Creed," Ubisoft said in a statement to the publication. "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a work of fiction that depicts the real events during the Golden Era of Pirates. We do not condone illegal whaling, just as we don't condone a pirate lifestyle of poor hygiene, plundering, hijacking ships, and over-the-legal-limit drunken debauchery."

"And even if the game does glorify whaling — as it certainly glorifies the life of a pirate — I don't think it will lead to a generation of gamers who head to the Caribbean to hunt down humpbacks. Just as I don't think anyone who played the previous Assassin's Creed games have found employment as a murderer for hire."

Point: Ubisoft. Although honestly, scoring a point against manufactured outrage from one of the most prolific outrage manufacturers on the planet is a bit like putting one into your own net, in terms of effort. Still, the statement deserved a response, because (he said, mixing sports metaphors like a mad scientist with a handful of smoking flasks and beakers) if PETA's going to hang one directly over the plate, it seems a shame to pass up an opportunity to send it rocketing into the upper deck.

PETA could be a useful contributor to society if it would just focus on actual, heinous animal abuse rather than attaching bits of crazy to whatever happens to fall within miles of its actual purview. But it looks like it would much rather continue to cement its reputation as an "out there" special interest group only slightly more credible than "birthers" or conspiracy theorists utilizing numerology to detail the connection between gold prices, the Illuminati and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

from the better-late-than-never dept

For many years, Ubisoft has been the go-to company for stories about DRM gone horribly wrong. They really seemed to believe that always-on DRM actually does something to stop piracy. That was followed with story after story after story of Ubisoft doing things that harm only paying customers and generally shoot themselves in the foot. You can go back over our posts about the company to see just how badly they have handled piracy for years. It really looked like the company was never going to learn the simple fact that it is more important to maximize sales than to fight piracy. So imagine our surprise when the following story came to light.

Ubisoft began making the rounds early this week, contacting a number of video game sites including Gamasutra and Rock, Paper, Shotgun and providing interviews. The purpose of these interviews? To tell the world that Ubisoft has changed its DRM ways. Much like the end of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' in which Scrooge takes to the streets to spread peace and goodwill, Ubisoft wants the world to know that it believes that providing its customers with the best gaming experience is the most important part of its new strategy.

If you look back to early 2011 and before, we did at one point in time go with an always-on activation, for any game. We realized that while it was probably one of the strictest forms of DRM, it wasn't the most convenient for our customers. We listened to the feedback, and have removed that requirement from those games, and stopped doing that going forward.

This is interesting because we had been complaining about always-online DRM since at least 2010 and other forms of Ubisoft DRM since 2006. However, the fact that they are actually listening to the feedback of consumers is a huge plus for them. This is a bold move for the company that decided that paying customers wouldn't miss playing their games at all for a few days while it moved its servers.

What we're trying to do is make [playing a game] easy for players who have legitimately bought our software, and at the same time put a registration requirement, or one-time activation requirement in, that includes some element of [software] protection.

The reality is, given enough time and effort, any game can be pirated, and many are. But what we're looking to do is validate the customer, then provide value to that customer for registering their software.

This is exactly what many customers have been asking for and many other successful companies have been giving. This idea that providing value to paying customers is a better way for success has been one that companies like Valve, Stardock and CD Projekt Red have known for years. But this lesson on DRM is not the only one that Ubisoft has learned.

Ubisoft also seems to have learned some very important lessons about piracy in general. Specifically, that not all people pirating a game are doing so just to get free stuff and that not all pirated copies are a lost sale.

I don't believe that every single pirated copy is a lost sale. In some cases I'm sure it's just someone trying out a game. At some level, you can almost look at it as a demo program. So as far as many of those could've been sales? I'm not sure.

In general, when people talk about piracy, there are all kinds of reasons cited, whether it's because of an economic imbalance, where people can't afford to buy a game in that particular [geographical territory], or it's a challenge, or it's someone who doesn't believe in supporting publishers by giving them money. There's a whole variety of reasons. That's why we want to focus on the rewards and benefits of owning the software.

This is another idea that other companies have known for a while, that piracy is the result of under-served customers. By focusing efforts on making the paid option more attractive than the free options, you can capture more sales than if you spent your time trying to stop piracy.

RPS: Do you acknowledge that always-on DRM has been extremely damaging to Ubisoft's reputation?

Burk: I think that, as Stephanie said, I think this is where that feedback comes in. We've obviously heard from PC customers that they were unhappy with some of the policies that we had in place, and that's why we're looking to make these changes – why we have been implementing these changes, as Stephanie says.

RPS: Would you be willing to say that it was a mistake?

Burk: No, I wouldn't say that. I'll let Stephanie say what she thinks, but I wouldn't use those words. This is a process, and we listened to feedback.

Perotti: I would say the same.

This attitude of not wanting to admit to any mistakes while still making this sweeping change in policy has the potential to leave a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouths. While the company is no longer hitting their customers over the proverbial head, they have not yet apologized for those actions, at least not out right. A good apology could go a long way in smoothing things over with their past and future customers -- though perhaps just the act of changing and admitting to the change is a form of an apology for many.

Over all, this is a great move by one of the last hold outs in regards to video game DRM. While many other companies still require some form of DRM, none were quite so bad as Ubisoft in that regard. Hopefully, this change of heart will echo throughout the gaming industry and all developers will abandon efforts in the futile fight against piracy and instead focus on maximizing sales through added value for their customers. Ubisoft has a bright future ahead of itself on this path and I wish them all the best of luck.

Yes, you read that right. According to Ubisoft's stats, when they determine how many copies of their DRM'd games are infringing vs. how many people play free to play games without ever paying... they're both right about 95%. From that you could make the argument that the people playing "for free" in either case, just aren't that interested in paying. Thus, cracking down on the infringement isn't likely to make much more money -- and, in fact, may be an expensive waste of time.

from the punishing-your-paying-customers dept

It's been nearly seven years since the great Sony rootkit fiasco, when it was discovered that Sony Music was using some DRM on its CDs that self-installed a rootkit (without letting users know) that had all sorts of security problems and vulnerabilities. The company took a massive hit for this, and you would think that others would be a lot more careful with their own DRM. You would think. But, then you don't know Ubisoft. The vast majority of times we've ever discussed Ubisoft in these pages, it's been because the company was doing something ridiculous with DRM. The company loves its DRM and seems to refuse to recognize that pissing off legitimate customers isn't such a good idea.

So would it come as any surprise that it may now be facing a "rootkit moment" of its own?

Basically, it appears that Ubisoft's DRM is installing an accidental backdoor that makes it possible for any website to effectively take control over your computer. That's... uh... pretty bad.

From the details, the real problem sounds to be one of exceptionally poor coding, rather than maliciousness. Basically, they wanted to let you launch the game via a website, but failed to limit it to just the game -- meaning that a site can make use of the plugin to basically do a whole bunch of stuff on your computer (including things you don't want it to do). The browser plugin is easy to remove (and you should, um, immediately, if you've installed any Ubisoft games), so it's not quite as messy as Sony's rootkit, which was pretty deeply buried. But it's still really bad.

Yet another case of DRM really making life difficult for legitimate customers who paid money for your product. When will companies figure out that DRM does nothing to stop piracy, but makes life really difficult for the people who actually give you money?